Before Your Onboarding: Checklist and Wizard
What to decide and gather before the Cloud onboarding call, who should attend, and what the Cloud setup wizard does in its two steps.
Cloud onboarding is a guided session of about an hour. It goes quickly when the right person is in the room with the right access, and stalls when they are not. This page is what to have ready.
Decide what the workspace is
One workspace equals one website and one business model. Different markets or languages under the same business are fine, and so are several business lines with different owners (describe the split in the growth strategy). An e-commerce store and a B2B lead-generation business in the same workspace confuse the agent. Agencies run one workspace per client and switch between them from the top menu.
If you already have a Free or Solo workspace, Cloud is an upgrade of that workspace, not a new one. Your connected integrations and context carry over.
Who should attend
The person who actually holds admin access to your tools. Typically that is one marketer plus, if your site is code, a developer for the GitHub connection. Sessions stall when access has to be requested from someone who is not on the call.
Access checklist
Have credentials or admin rights for everything on this list that you use. Skip what you do not run.
| Tool | What you need | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Owner or full user on the property | The single most important source for the SEO and content loop |
| Google Analytics 4 | Editor on the property, plus Admin to create a BigQuery link | Funnel, conversions, landing pages |
| Google Tag Manager | Publish rights on the container | Fixing tracking without a developer |
| Google Ads | Admin on the account (create one even if you do not spend; historic search terms are valuable) | Search intent, quality score, fastest way to test a keyword |
| Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, Snapchat, Bing Ads | Admin on the ad account; Meta needs Business Manager access | Paid social and paid search audits |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Ability to verify the domain | The only source of AI citation data inside a search engine |
| Site | GitHub repository access, or CMS admin (Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Framer, Sanity, Ghost, Contentful) | Executing content and page tickets |
| E-commerce | Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Abicart or Litium API access | Revenue, products, orders |
| CRM | HubSpot admin or Upsales key | Lead quality and attribution |
| API key for Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Brevo, MailerLite, Rule, Get a Newsletter, Drip, Braze or Symplify | Email performance and automations | |
| Revenue and finance | Stripe restricted key, RevenueCat key, Fortnox login | Revenue, subscriptions, profit signals |
Two common blockers worth pre-empting:
- Google Workspace admin policies can block OAuth to unlisted apps. If the connection fails with an unverified-app warning, click through the advanced option, or ask your Workspace admin to allow the app.
- Meta requires an invitation to your Business Manager for ad management scopes. Have a Business Manager admin available.
What the Cloud wizard does
After payment, the workspace shows the Cloud setup wizard until it completes.
- Name your workspace. Enter your website URL; the workspace name is derived from it. This URL anchors the generated context, so use the real production domain.
- Setting up your workspace. Takes two to three minutes. Cogny creates a dedicated Google Cloud project and BigQuery warehouse for the workspace, a service account, and the data-sync connection, then researches your industry, company and competitors on the open web and writes the first three context documents. From this step you can watch the two-minute intro or book the onboarding meeting.
When it finishes you land in Settings with the button "connect data sources". That is where the setup sequence starts.
Your Cloud subscription includes 5,000 credits per month, refilled monthly, plus any top-ups you add. See credits and plans.
Decisions to make in the session
You will be asked these during onboarding. Thinking about them beforehand saves time:
- What are the two to five numbers you run the business on? Leads, qualified leads, purchases, revenue, cost per lead, monthly donors. These become core metrics.
- What must the agent never do or say? Restricted terms, regulated claims, channels you have ruled out, brand rules. These go into the context tree and growth strategy.
- How autonomous do you want to be? Everything approval-gated at first is the default. Auto-execution is a setting you turn up later.
- Where should reports go? Which people get the Monday email.
- Who approves tickets, and when? A named person and a weekly slot. Tuesday after the Monday report works well.
After the session
- Data starts accruing from the connection date. Check back at the end of the week for reports and tickets that reflect real data.
- Ask other team members to log in and ask the chat questions. Their questions become context too.
- Settings is visible to owners and admins only. Invite your team with the right roles.
Reading this with an AI agent? Fetch the raw markdown at /docs/cloud-onboarding-checklist/index.md or see llms.txt.